Reading the Book of Nature

Appendix A: Outcome of Previous Research Leaves
I. "Uniting Nature, Science, and Literature: Contemporary Environmental Science
Writers and the Inheritance of Rachel Carson and Loren Eiseley" (spring 2001) -- The
major goals of this study were to analyze contemporary environmental science writers in light of
the nature writing and popular science of Rachel Carson and Loren Eiseley; to assess the
development of a new mode of environmental science writing which combines elements of
natural history, travel literature, popular science, biography, and/or autobiography; and to
examine how this discourse (1) vigorously critiques our environmental values and practices, (2)
fosters scientific and environmental literacy among the general public, and (3) reflects and/or
revises gendered representations of both nature and science.
My work during that 2001 research leave resulted in a peer-reviewed journal article
entitled "It's Worth the Risk: Science and Autobiography in Sandra Steingraber's Living
Downstream" published in Women's Studies Quarterly (2001) -- the first scholarly study of
Steingraber, who in subsequent years has become one of the most important scientist-writers /
environmental activists in the US, as evidenced by her string of critically-acclaimed books and
artful journalism. More importantly, I completed the final revisions of a book manuscript,
Visions of the Land: Literature, Science, and the American Environment, which had been
submitted for review to the University of Virginia Press in the fall of 2000. The book was
formally awarded a contract based on my spring 2001 revisions, and was published in 2002 as
the 9th book in their new environmental studies series, "Under the Sign of Nature." (I should also
note that in the summer of 1997, a $500 Roosevelt Summer Research Grant supported my early
efforts to reconceptualize and conduct additional research on my PhD dissertation, which in turn
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